Xoogler here - Totally agree that the bulging middle management layers and lack of crisp CEO vision have dismantled the company's ability to weather the changes of "growing up". Had a few managers and multiple reorgs in my Still, there are definitely people trying to do the right thing for users despite frequent bu$iness side overrides, and IMO still some best-of-breed products amongst the sprawling graveyard/zombies. I could even get through to a real person at Nest customer support a few weeks ago!
Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
211–220 of 1001 posts
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#212> “Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google.” Ouch. I know a lot of outsiders believe that, but to have someone who spent 2-decades at Google saying it publicly is rough.
The thing is it's not Sundar's job to be a visionary leader. That's not why the shareholders put him where he is. He is a bean counter and is doing a fantastic job bean counting and increasing Google's share price.
IDK, if you look at what Microsoft has accomplished under the leadership of Satya over the last 9 years it's obviously possible to innovate and bean count at the same time
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#213"Flutter is amazingly successful. It's already the leading mobile app development framework" ???
There are a lot of reasonable metrics one might use to define "leading mobile app development framework":
* Number of developers using it on some daily/weekly/monthly, etc. cadence.
* Number of apps published (to iOS, Android, both).
* Number of jobs available using the framework.
* Various subjective desirability metrics from developers survey like the StackOverflow ones.
It's anyone's guess as to which is the best metric or how they should be combined. Also, it's very hard to actually get accurate data on it.
But, according to Statistica at least, yes Flutter really is the most popular mobile app framework as of 2022:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/869224/worldwide-softwar...
It looks like that's based on a developer survey. I don't know more about its methodology.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#214Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…
> ... what's the alternative? A cutthroat corporate environment where you're never sure about the future of your job?
No, I think the ideal structure for a company which accumulated a great amount of resources is to become a sort of Venture Capitalist with the teams of people they control.
So, ZERO "corporativism", ZERO bureaucracy, ZERO control, just give access to the company resources and let the teams come up with a business model.
So, yes to more risk for employees (don't perform -> get your team reorganised -> get fired), but also gives way more upside in the form of significant bonus when a team deliver amazing financial results.
You'll get the majority of teams performing badly and getting axed and a few delivering unicorn-like results to the company at large, with the stars doing that being rewarded greatly.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#215As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…
is this criticism reasonable though? Look at Waymo, for example. Investing in that is very visionary. I mean, someone has to work on the stuff that pays the current bills, right? Or, what about Bard? Sure, Bard kinda sucks compared to chat gpt 4, but it's really at worst number 2 in the most exciting current field?
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#216As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…
I think what's been said, and the description of the general ineptness of that particular manager, has been 100% spot on. Middle management as a whole has basically gotten worse, meaner and generally less technically capable since 2018.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like the generic complaints of everyone who doesn't like their manager ever and frankly I would have thought twice before attaching my name to a broadside that attacks a former manager by name. But hey, what do I know, I never worked at Google.
Even in my “I quit Google” post I was careful to make it impossible for an outsider to determine who I was complaining about, even scrubbing my team info from LinkedIn. But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.
Oh well. Maybe it's about time incompetent people were named and shamed, maybe that would put a stop to failing upwards for people who really shouldn't be there.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#218When did it become acceptable to write things about other people as he writes about Jeanine Banks? Even if everything he says about her is true, it still feels incredibly rude to say it in public.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
>perhaps that organization will inevitably develop into something resembling IBM. So an over 100 year old company that makes 10s of billions of dollars?
Sure. But people in this thread aren't complaining that Google's profitable. They're complaining about the culture. Long term, such a poisonous culture is not a sustainable path to growth or retained profitability. And it's even less sustainable when the company is dependent on an undiversified revenue stream, since they need to be innovating to mitigate that risk, and a poisonous culture is toxic to innovation. But…
Microsoft has certainly had a pretty amazing transformation. After they lost mobile and the client OS market was clearly stagnant to declining, it seemed they were toast if you looked at where their revenue came from. (And their early hybrid cloud strategy was sort of a mess too.)
Whereas, as you suggest, Google's cloud strategy has been marginal except for Google Docs and they're still mostly an ad company.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#22012 years at Google for me, 2011-2023. Left after they froze internal transfers the same day I was going to transfer, which put me in limbo for 6 months despite management saying they'd find a way to get it done. Absolutely agree with this article. The disaster of Google+ and "Real Names Considered Harmful" was the first major crack in the culture. The layoffs destroyed what was left. The change in frankness and hones…
> Google+ and "Real Names Considered Harmful" That happened right after I'd accepted an offer from Google but before I'd started work there; it was an uncomfortable shock and a bad way to begin. I only lasted a year, also largely because I was unable to transfer. It's funny what happens to one's motivation when unable to do meaningful work... This author's remark about Vic Gundotra struck me as... a very tactful way…
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